Happy New Year!

This New Years Eve was spent with another volunteer at her much more rural site and with a Moroccan friend of ours. We made typical New Years appetizers from scratch, with varying degrees of success, but the process was a lot of fun. The power went out as it got close to midnight, and we sat with flashlights listening to music on a computer with a dying battery. Right at midnight the computer finally blacked out. It was our own little ball-drop countdown to the new year!

Lessons of 2008:

- I am able to pick myself up from devastation and take on a new life
- It is better to carpool with a friend than to drive alone
- Public transportation will show you a new side to the city you grew up in
- A good boss is priceless
- Friends that will listen to you go on an on until you can't talk about it any more are invaluable
- Horses, donkeys, cars, bicycles, trucks, carts and people can all manage to share the same road
- Traditions become more precious, and more ridiculous when trying to recreate them in another culture
- Drinking whole milk and sugary tea everyday actually can lead to weight gain
- Living in another culture teaches you as much about yourself as it does the world
- Generosity is being patient with someone who cannot communicate like everyone else
- Humbleness is speaking like a child with the mind of an adult
- Joy is finding a common language, like baking
- A sunny day means laundry will dry
- Volunteering yourself to help others sometimes means not being there for friends and family back home
- There is always more lamb meat
- We are adaptable creatures, even to situations that seemed absurd mere months ago
- The internet is invaluable in keeping in touch to far-away people
- There are plenty of edible parts to an animal that we mostly ignore in the US
- You absolutely must be able to laugh at yourself and let things go